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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

Botswana’s water plan hits the rocks

By
SUE ARMSTRONG in
BOTSWANA

Diamonds, dredges and the wilderness of the Okavango Delta are at the
centre of a conflict that could embarrass the government of Botswana. The
conflict is over a controversial water development scheme that involves
dredging a stretch of the Boro river in the delta.

The Botswana government finally agreed last week to allow Greenpeace
to scrutinise the plan. Ken Tinley, an ecologist who has worked extensively
in the Okavango Delta, will visit the area next month to prepare an environmental
impact assessment for Greenpeace.

Botswana, a country the size of France, has a population of 1.3 million,
and is semi-arid. Two-thirds of the country is taken up by the Kalahari
Desert. Lack of water is one of the prime constraints on economic development,
and providing enough to meet the needs of the second-fastest growing population
in Africa is a constant preoccupation of the government.

Only 5 per cent of the country receives enough rain to grow crops without
drawing on other water sources. At present Botswana obtains 80 per cent
of its water from underground. The only two surface water sources of any
note are the Chobe and the Okavango rivers.

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But any attempt to harness the waters of the Okavango is fraught with
danger, for the river does not flow to the sea, but into the heart of the
Kalahari where it fans out to create a vast inland delta. The delta is one
of the last great wildernesses in Africa, and is renowned internationally
for its abundant flora and fauna.

The focus of the controversy is the Southern Okavango Integrated Water
Development Scheme. This scheme proposes the construction of several reservoirs
on the delta’s fringe as well as dredging to improve the efficiency of the
Boro river, which carries the outflow from the Okavango. According to the
government, the objectives of the project are to meet increasing demands
for water from the fast growing town of Maun and surrounding villages on
the delta’s southern lip, to irrigate land for agriculture, and to secure
the water supply to the Orapa diamond mine, one of the world’s richest,
in the southeastern Kalahari.

What alarms conservationists most is that the dredging of the Boro river
will extend 25 kilometres inside the veterinary cordon which marks the border
between the sacrosanct wilderness area and the outer fringes of the delta
where local people graze cattle. Until now, no development has been allowed
inside the fence, which isolates domestic cattle from wild buffalo, potential
carriers of foot-and-mouth disease.

The Okavango river rises in the highlands of Angola to the north. In
years of good rain, the flooded delta covers more than 10,000 square kilometres.
The dredging operation is likely to affect only 95 square kilometres, but
critics believe this is only a beginning: if the present scheme fails to
deliver the anticipated amount of water, the government will find it hard
to resist the temptation to dredge a little deeper into the delta.

‘The government has pledged never to go farther than the 25 kilometres,’
says a member of the Kalahari Conservation Society, Botswana’s leading environmental
pressure group. ‘But having spent some 41 million pula (12 million Pounds)
on the work, it will be very difficult for them not to think that if they
invest just a little bit more they’ll get what they want.’

The conservationists’ fears are well founded. The history of the Okavango
Delta is littered with failed attempts to manipulate its waters. The average
gradient of the delta is only 1 in 3600, and the waters are guided by a
number of fault lines in the bedrock, which are seismically very active.
The flow of the waterways changes constantly and is almost impossible to
predict.

Many of the scheme’s critics believe that the present proposal is based
on inadequate topographical and hydrological data; other critics believe
that such a fickle system will always outwit the engineers and should simply
be left alone. Indeed, a traditional belief among the local people – supported
by so many past failures – is that a river is a living thing that is easily
killed by people and their machines.

The justification for the scheme is being challenged, too. The original
plan envisaged irrigating 10,000 hectares for agriculture, but subsequent
analysis of the local soils has identified only 1300 hectares suitable for
cultivation. Maun, which draws its water from bored wells, has not yet tapped
the surface water on its own doorstep.

The projected needs of these potential customers do not justify such
extensive engineering in the delta, say its critics. This has led some to
suggest that the Orapa diamond mine is the driving force behind the scheme.
However, as the controversy has intensified, Debswana, the company that
runs the diamond mine, has distanced itself firmly from the project. Debswana
is an equal partnership between the giant diamond company De Beers and the
Botswana government.

Greenpeace has threatened to start a ‘Diamonds are for Death’ campaign,
linkin the mining operation with environmental destruction, unless the plans
to dredge the Boro north of the veterinary fence are shelved.

Debswana cannot afford to take such threats from environmentalists lightly.
‘They’ve seen the fur market killed; they’ve seen the ivory market killed,’
says one conservationist. ‘What necessity is there to mine diamonds? The
whole value structure is based on public relations and suggestion. Someone
like Greenpeace going nuts could destroy the industry.’

Diamonds are vitally important to Botswana, accounting for around 80
per cent of its export earnings. Their discovery has lifted the country
from being one of the world’s 20 poorest nations in 1966 to one with the
fastest growing economy in Africa apart from the oil producers.

When the Orapa diamond mine opened in 1971 it drew its water from the
Mopipi reservoir, which fills with the outflow from the Okavango Delta.
But during the great drought of the early 1980s the Mopipi dried up and
attempts to encourage the flow by dredging its feeder channel failed. Orapa
has since been pumping ground water from wells.

‘It should be clearly understood that the proposed Okavango water scheme
was not in response to any representation from Debswana,’ the company said
in a recent statement. ‘Sufficient underground water reserves have been
identified in the vicinity of Orapa and are estimated to be capable of sustaining
the mine and the township during prolonged droughts.’

There is heavy competition for ground water, however. Orapa’s cattle-farming
neighbours complain that their wells constantly run dry. The water table
is slow to replenish itself. Demand countrywide is expected to increase
by 50 per cent over the next 20 years, and the government likes to safeguard
supplies for emergencies.

Opponents of the scheme want to know why the government of Botswana
has been so determined to go ahead when the Chobe/Zambesi river system in
the north offers an alternative, though more expensive, option if the need
for water becomes pressing.

Local opposition to the scheme has reached a head. Last week 500 people
from the region heckled a government official for six hours as he tried
to explain the scheme to them. They would fight if any bulldozers moved
in, they said. ‘There will be a war here.’